Take The Low Hanging Search Engine Fruit

Millions of Web sites are elbowing each other every day for search engine position. Many of them belong to big businesses with big marketing budgets. How do you compete with that? By grabbing some of the lower hanging search engine fruit they’re too big and busy to notice. Our company, Visionefx, is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia and helps businesses in all Hampton Roads cities to rank high among major search engines. One of our methods is to collect quality content for our clients’ Web sites. The content can be regional or local, and we recommend using as much as you can. If you sell lady’s jewelry, talk about local jewelry shows, local trade shows, fashion shows and events. Don’t know of any events? Try calling the Convention Center in your city or check out their web site. Another great resource is your regional newspaper or online newspaper web site. Quality content is king!

Utilize Local and Regional Search Engine Listings

If you have a business in Virginia Beach or any other Hampton Roads city such
as Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake or Suffolk, get a local listing in Google.
Yahoo offers local listings as well. To see how local results differ from general
results go to Google and type “Web design in virginia beach”. At the top of the
page you’ll see “Local results for Web design near Virginia Beach, VA”. If you
click this link you’ll see 9 to 10 companies listed for Virginia Beach, VA. This
type of list is very popular and powerful when it comes to consumers looking for
services or products on the Web.

Get Results With Regional Listings

Customers prefer doing business with local businesses. But you need to rank high
in their Web search, or you’ll be buried on page 10, where few customers tread.
How do you get there? Sprinkle your Web site with the correct keywords. If you’re
a Virginia mortgage company, figure out how customers will search for mortgage
services or loans over the Internet if they live in Virginia. Will they type,
“loan companies in Virginia”, “Virginia mortgage companies” or “mortgage loans
in Virginia”? One good way to know what phrases people are using to search for
your product, service, issue or cause is through the Google Suggest Tool. Not
many users, including search engine professionals, know about this great Google
tool. But it works and it’s a great tool for getting into the consumer’s mind.
It is located on Google under ‘Google Labs/ Suggest in the left hand column.

All Politics Is Local — So Is Good Web Site Content

If a business with a Web site in Hampton Roads is based in Virginia Beach, then it’s a good idea to tighten your Web site copy and keywords to contain the words “Virginia Beach”. But make sure you walk the fine line between legitimate use and overabundance. Search engines will spot the later and ignore your site. Your success or search engine position will also depend on the competitiveness of your business. For example, “firewood in Virginia Beach” versus “dentists in Virginia Beach”.

Write For Visitors - Not Search Engines

There is no magic formula or special software to get you listed at the top of search engine results. However, there is a golden rule that will do the trick
— Content is King. Good content generates great search engine results - period. So go ahead and chat it up, tell people what you do, what you sell, what you provide. Talk about your competition. Yes, you heard me right. But make sure you’re doing
this in a way that “informs” your Web site visitors instead of intentionally piggy-backing on the popularity of another Web site. Case in point - Virginia Oncology Associates has an extremely content-rich Web site. On their research pages they mention the “Sarah Cannon Cancer Center” regarding on-going clinical trials. If you type “Sarah Cannon Cancer Center” in Google you get a first page, first position result for Virginia Oncology for the corresponding page; (www.virginiacancer.com/research.asp). Now take a look at their search engine results in Google. Not bad search results for Google. They also get the same results in Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Be careful when you’re using
a competitor’s name. For example, if you’re a moving company based in Virginia Beach and you fill your Web pages with name-brand, popular moving companies in Virginia Beach, Virginia for no other reason than to ride on their popularity in the search engines, you could get penalized by the search engines. Remember, it’s all about relevant content - relevant to your Web site.

Going Passive Increases Search Phrase Optimization

You can never tell how potential customers are going to find your Web site. I call this “passive search phrase optimization”. This is when users visit your
Web site while they were searching for something else. Case in point: Rourk Public Relations has a section on their Web site titled NEWSROOM. The article under the newsroom titled “What Does Your Image Communicate”, contains tips about professional business attire, presenting a polished and powerful appearance for men and women, and so on. One phrase in the article is, “best quality gabardine suit”. Go to Google and search the phrase “best quality gabardine suit”. Rourk Public Relations is on the first page, fourth listing. This is “passive search phrase optimization”.

Optimize Web Site Headings Too

Another way to optimize your Web site is to use your keywords in headings, subtitles, page titles (found in the blue bar at the top of your Web browser), bold face and hyperlinks, because these stand out to the search engines. For example, a local Visionefx real estate Web site client Charlie Laurens and Associates had a page file titled “our team.asp”. We changed this to “virginiabeach-realestate-team.asp”. Their page title is “Virginia Beach Real Estate Services Virginia”.

How To Be visible

Many Web sites were built by hobbyists or built with old software that is no longer recognized by today’s sophisticated search engines. That means these Web sites are “invisible” to major search engines, which means thousands of “eyes on screens” will be looking at someone else’s product, service, issue or cause. I went to Google and searched “plumbing company in virginia beach”. I did not find any local plumbing Web site results on the first or second pages. What does this tell me? It says there is not one single plumbing company in the city of Virginia Beach that has a Web site that is properly optimized. It also tells me that there are not very many (if any) Web sites for plumbing in Virginia Beach. Too bad, a small plumbing business could rule local search in the major search engines for “plumbing”. Try this with search terms related to jewelry, real estate or auto sales and the results will be much different.

Web Sites Don’t Cost, They Pay

If you provide services or products in Virginia, Virginia Beach or other Hampton Roads cities and you don’t have a Web site, get one. It is quickly becoming the primary way our younger, as well as our middle-aged, generation search for information, products and services. To find a professional Web design company, shop around and request quotes. A bulleted list of what you want your site to do will be helpful in your search. Submit this via email to a Web design company in your area and
comparison shop.

About the Author
Ricardo Vidallon is company owner and creative designer for http://www.visionefx.net

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Selling is the number one skill you MUST learn if you are going to be in business whether online or offline. If you do not know how to sell, you and your business will struggle financially and success will take much longer to realise.

This truth is very simple and hard to deny: if you do not know how to sell or HATE selling, you cannot make money. Period.

On the other hand, the Internet marketplace is jam-packed with plenty of fantastic opportunities and wonderful products. I you want to learn how to sell chances are that you have:

A great idea that you think you can make money from,

A product that solves a specific problem, and/or

An income opportunity to provide to people online.

But the fact is this: if you do not know how to sell, you cannot turn your idea or product into a money-producing asset, no matter how great or high in quality they actually are.

What You Need

You have probably already got a great idea or a product, now you will need to have the following in order to churn out a sales letter that kills:

1. Good writing skills.

Since you will probably write your own sales copy, you will need to have good writing skills and a good command of English, at least. There are plenty of online copywriting courses and membership sites where you can learn from more experienced writers.

2. Personality.

Yes, you must need personality. You will be writing somewhat a personal letter from you to your prospects so be friendly and approachable in your letter. Don’t write a stiff letter, because not only is it boring to read, you turn people away from your web page faster than Speedy Gonzalez!

Mix your writing skills with personality, and you will make most of a perfect sales letter that kills!

And last but not least, you need…

3. To take action!

There is wealth of information on how you can write your own successful sales copy staring at you online - don’t waste them by not doing anything with the information! The next step after developing your sales copy skills will be to setup a web page to sell your products online. The WebmasterFX.com website provides a range of internet marketing tools to help you build a successful sales pulling, profit producing website.

Finally, go and read point number 3 again…

Take Action! Take that great idea that you think you can make money from and start learning to write successful sales copy today!

To see our latest range of Internet Marketing Tools visit our website today at http://www.webmasterfx.com
Copyright 2006 WebmasterFX

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If you’re like most people in business for themselves, you market yourself in an ad hoc fashion: when you have time, when you think of it or only when a specific opportunity comes along. But wouldn’t you agree with me that inconsistency in marketing creates inconsistency in new client flow? That seems to be the bain of existence for most self-employed people like us.

So, is there such a thing as being able to PREDICT how many new clients you’ll get next month or next year? I say YES!

You see, I’m able to predict (with certain accuracy) that I have a full practice at most times; therefore, how much revenue comes in for each month of this year. For example, I know that I’ll have a full practice in 6 months and then again a year later.

How can I be so sure? Because I’ve created systems that keep me on track in my marketing, even a year ahead of time.

You may have heard me get on my soapbox about being systematic in your networking and in your marketing efforts, but let’s take it just a bit further this time and get down to the details of what that actually looks like when you do it (like I do).

I recommend buying a year-at-a-glance calendar and plugging in your marketing efforts. For example, your weekly breakfast networking group goes onto the calendar for the entire year, same with your monthly association meetings, writing your articles, giving teleclasses, meeting with your referral partners, sending your newsletter, mailings, speaking engagements, etc.

That way, you never have a week where you’re not doing ANYTHING to market yourself. That means you no longer have periods of feast or famine, or an inconsistent pipeline of curious prospects, ready to buy.

Client example: A recent client of mine, a real estate broker, decided to take this even one step further. Because much of her marketing depends on several mailings to specific buildings she covers in her territory, she wanted to keep track of them on this yearly at-a-glance wall calendar. On it, she designated a system for seeing what mailings would go to which buildings on what weeks. So it looked like this:

• Mailing 1 would go to Buildings A, B, and C on the first of every month.
• Mailing 1 would then go to Buildings D, E, and F on the second week of every month (and so on for the rest of the month).
• Then Mailing 2 goes out to the first set of buildings on the first week of the month, and so on.

Each week of the month, she now has a color-coded system for sending a mailing, staggered so that she doesn’t get overwhelmed, but that will also keep her on track. That way, each month, each building receives a systematic mailing, that’s 12 mailings per year. Best of all, she doesn’t even do the mailings anymore! Her assistant does it for her, so that allows us to focus on other marketing even more. Well done!

At the end of the day, it’s a predictable, verifiable and ‘autopilot’ way of marketing yourself, so that when done consistently and set up over a year’s worth of time, your client well never runs dry.

Your Assignment:

Get yourself a wall calendar (I use the Year-At-A-Glance laminated wall calendar, SKU: 558430) that is erasable and retails for about $18.99. Then, spend some time plotting out your marketing efforts for this month, then the next, until the end of the year (or 2007). You’ll find that you have a bird’s eye view of your entire year, and now you just need to follow the simple system you’ve set up. So easy, and it will help you to market consistently, so you can almost predict how many clients you’ll have!

© 2006 Client Attraction LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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